Part 5 – The Teachings of Jesus.
I am currently sitting in front of my computer, at the half way point in this series, and have come (as you have too I hope) to the conclusion that although Jesus was not known personally to the Old Testament figures whose writings we have studied, it is impossible to write him out of the story. I am also looking at a Bible full of those little post-it page markers (42 last count) that have taken up residence since I started this series, and not one of them has full meaning without Jesus. So we turn now to see how Jesus himself taught us about the ‘Day of the Lord’. Although this phrase seems to decline as we move into the New Testament; it is replaced by the phrase ‘The End Times’ in the Gospels (it returns again in Paul’s teachings). Jesus moves away from the original concept of all of the events we have discussed before occurring at once, rather it is an elongated process that began with his victory on the cross. To make a slightly tangential point, this is not to say that Jesus’ victory can be pinned down to a specific point in time – it extends beyond our concept of time to mean that all who trusted in God from Genesis are saved because they believed in the promised salvation that was found in Him, as we learn from many parts of the New Testament.
And so to the teachings of Jesus; or rather to a moment when it became clear that the promised Messiah had arrived: Matthew 17:1-13, Mark 9:2-13 and Luke 9:28-36 all tell the story of the transfiguration. It is so easy to skip over this passage without truly understanding what is going on here. Jesus is revealed to Peter, James and John for who he is. Let’s think back to the third part of the series and Daniel 10; the same images apply here, the death metaphor, the resurrection metaphor and the image of a ‘Son of Man’ as a being of pure light. Reflect back again on Psalm 50:2, Isaiah 4:2 and Ezekiel 1:4. Jesus fulfils, at this moment, everything that God’s messiah is meant to be. Look forward to Revelation 1 now, and read it slowly and carefully to yourself and picture Jesus as he is now described there; that is what is going on here: King Jesus is revealed to the chosen disciples for who he really is. This is an indication of what is to come.
We must now focus on the teachings entitled ‘Signs of the end of ages’ (Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21). First, however, we shall look at why our interpretation of these is so important:
‘He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?’
This is very powerful and just as relevant now as then! We all make predictions about trivial things, which turn out to be correct because we know what we’re looking for. The Pharisees should have known what they were looking for; there are around 300 prophecies about Jesus, many of which were beyond his control to fulfill in his earthly body (such as his place of birth in Micah 5:2). This can only add weight to his claim to be the Messiah. But the Pharisees were blind to see the signs that told them as clear as day who Jesus was, because they in their hypocrisy held to their own distorted beliefs and ignored the signs. We could easily become like this: seeing the signs not for what they are but as we want to see them, or, worse still, as the world would have us see them (as calamitous and hopeless and ‘the end of the world’). Our reaction must be carefully thought out; there is a distinction between the approach where we sit inactive with a checklist of what we know will happen, or live in worldly fear, or continue to follow our calling whilst being aware of what is going on around us, as we should. The Bible tells us what to expect from the moment of Jesus’ ascension to the moment of his coming so that we can interpret the signs. This passage is not given to frighten us; it is to reassure us (you might like to recall that in Isaiah 51:3-6 God comes to comfort us). How many of you watched in horror and fear during the war in Iraq in 2003? How many people had fears of nuclear war? As a slight tangent, it is interesting to note how selfish such fear is! The point here is that we know what is going to happen and why, and what will happen afterwards; the knowledge is that after a period of suffering will come the Father to call us home. As Jesus so often said, do not be afraid!
And now, I suspect if I could hear you cry, I would hear you cry something like: ‘but what about the signs of the end of the age?’ And you are perfectly correct, if you have done so, to do so. Let’s just be clear that when we look at them, we are (as I hope the above sections have demonstrated) dealing with the need to see the wood for the trees and see world events for what they really are and realising that Jesus is not telling us anything that was not prophesied in the Old Testament, he is describing how he will fulfill it.
For the purposes of this exercise I will refer to the passage in Matthew 24 using the other synoptic gospels for comparative reference. Verses 1 and 2 discuss the destruction of the Temple. A good comparative reference for us here is the passage in Ezekiel 10 in which the Glory of the Lord departs from the Temple. If God is no longer present in the Temple it has no meaning and therefore the physical presence of it is pointless, it is destroyed both spiritually and physically. It has very clear overtones of the coming judgment. In fact if we look at Ezekiel as a whole, we see that the departure of the glory of God form his temple is followed by the pronouncement of judgment upon Israel, God reveals their sin to them and then describes his plan to redeem them. His glory then returns to the temple and symbolically streams out of it as a mighty river (Ezekiel 40 to 47 describes this process in great detail). This passage sets the scene for the rest of this teaching, following on as it does from the passage describing seven woes in chapter 23.
As we move on to the main body of this passage we find that all of the Old Testament prophecies that we have already seen are confirmed and summarised by Jesus. I hope that in limiting earlier study purely to the Old Testament we will be better placed to understand the summary. Let us remember that the Pharisees also knew these prophecies but failed to understand them, it is therefore vital that we read them ourselves and look for them in Jesus summary; it is all part of who he is.
The next section, which talks of ‘birth pains’ may be linked to Paul’s message in Romans 8:22, which reiterates what Jesus is saying here. False (or more accurately ‘pseudo’) messiahs will arise claiming to be Jesus; this is something we learn about later in the New Testament in many places. Why has Peter written in 2 Peter about warning about false teachers and John in 1 John 2:18-27 and 4:1-6 and Paul in 1 Timothy 1:3-11, Galatians 1:6-10, 1 Corinthians 3? All of these and many more passages are written because the early church had many problems. This is also why we find in the letters that the basic truth of the Gospel is presented in every letter; it would not have been necessary if there was no need to reassert the truth over the lies of false teaching. This is not a sign for sometime in the future; it is a sign for us now. That’s not to say we should mistrust people who speak in meetings, but we should ensure that we build up our knowledge of scripture and our relationships with God so that we will be able to discern what is right and of God and what is not through what we have learnt and in the Spirit. A profound caution for all of us is to be found in 2 Corinthians 11:14.
The next discourse relates to what will happen specifically to Christ’s followers. A time of great trial and persecution will come, during which many will be martyred. But in spite of this we are promised in verse 13 that all who remain faithful will be saved. This has strong connections with the repeated phrase in Revelation 2 and 3 ‘To him who overcomes’; we are promised a reward beyond our wildest dreams if we are prepared to endure these times. Again, don’t let us think that this is an abstract time for the future; the worldwide church is currently undergoing persecution far beyond our knowledge in all parts of the world. Do not underestimate the persecution we face here in the form of a media centred desire to have a positive public image; by this I mean, how many times do we dress up what we believe to be true in a way that soothes our society rather than challenging it for fear of a bad press? How often do we tell soothing lies to our friends when we should be honest with them? The gospel is only perceived as good, as we saw earlier, because we know what we must compare it with; next time a friend says ‘what do you think/believe about this?’ try taking a step back and rather than beating about the proverbial bush, tell them from scripture what we believe. In fact we have little to worry about if we do this. We believe that the practise of any sexual sin, for example, is wrong, but that does not mean that we are not bound by God’s word to show love towards the sinners. Remember the love shown by Jesus to sinners and that the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Mark 3:29), which means an outright rejection of Him and His work (i.e. not accepting God). Is this not in fact a positive and comforting answer? It presents the gospel message to a person in need rather than seeking after what society wants to hear. This is what being faithful is; that we adhere to the truth of the gospel regardless of any personal consequence.
Verse 14 has amazing repercussions for us. It tells us that before this world will be called to an end, gospel must go out to all the nations. Mark 13:10 puts greater emphasis on this point by saying that the gospel ‘must’ go out first; which puts us under a sacred duty to proclaim Jesus. Matthew has an encouraging way of phrasing this saying that the gospel ‘will’ go out; God has planned it and it will be so.
The following discourse (verses 12-35) mirrors closely ideas and images we have already considered from the Old Testament, so it should be read in the light of what we now know from the prophecies we have already studied. A point to reiterate is that verses 36-51 tell us that no-one knows the time when all of this will happen; there can be no doubt that the ‘birth pains’ described are all around us, we are waiting now for the final days to come, but it is futile to try and guess.
It is my hope that from this article we have learned what Jesus has brought to the teachings that we knew before we began, but also that we have gained a greater understanding of what it means to be the fulfilment of these prophecies from his own words. And as we approach the end of this series we now turn to what the apostles of the early church taught about the end times. Much of it will again be given clarity and context by our knowledge of the Old Testament prophecy which should already have informed our reading of Jesus’ teachings.